A Kiss is a Terrible Thing to Waste
by phabulousphantom
Summary: A series of scenes, drabbles, one-shots, and other such sundries of my modern-day Sebastian and Grelle.
1. Claw Foot Bath

Grelle Sutcliffe's hair was inhumanly long. This, of course, was only natural, seeing as she was no longer human.

It took ages to gather every lengthy red lock into a suitable bun on the top of her head—one that wouldn't tangle too much, one that was balanced and wouldn't slip out. By the time she had it pinned up there, the bun was nearly the same size as her head. She'd thought about cutting her hair for over a decade now, but that was the thing with an immortal life. One could spend a century making a decision and feel no loss of time for it.

Grelle climbed into the claw foot tub, the bathroom floorboards of the Kings Cross terraced house squealing with the concentrated weight of tub, water, and reaper. She settled carefully, resting her back against the raised slope on the one end. The water was stingingly hot, though she hardly felt it. Something about being dead and cold that she hadn't really listened to during the lecture she'd received after she'd killed herself and woken up a reaper. Grelle clicked her tongue at the memory. She'd gone out in a bathtub not unlike this one. Warm water. Open wrists. Had the scars still—though not all Shinigami did—deep but delicate zigzagging lines down the insides of both her forearms. She'd thought it was quite romantic at the time, so very Roman, to wink oneself out of the world like Seneca had, but the truth was cold.

Death was never romantic.

Grelle slipped a little deeper into the water. The floorboards squealed again.

They'd let the flat for over a month now, a little two bedroom thing on Keystone Crescent with a door the color of a robin's egg. Grelle had fallen in love with the place on sight, and she blamed the door. The rest of the property was ancient, creaky like the floorboards. She was hungry for a remodel, but they were renters, and the building was in a conservation area. Damned Victorians and their damned adorable Victorian architecture. Council wouldn't even let them have a car port. Had to preserve the street's aesthetic charm—well, enjoying the charm was one thing, but having to be the one keeping it up was another. Grelle hadn't really considered the cost when she'd insisted that Keystone Crescent _absolutely, positively_ was the place that they _must_ live. Sebastian had laughed at her, always having more foresight, but agreed.

The picturesque street was good for his image as an up-and-coming artist. Just the right balance of starving and expensive, bespoke and conformist. When he'd first dipped into photography in the nineteen fifties, Grelle never would have guessed that he'd stick to it for so long. How many names had he taken? How many shows had he put up in galleries since then? Grelle had lost count during the mid-nineties when he'd had five aliases, two of which he'd crafted into bitter rivals. She hummed a light, close-lipped laugh that echoed in the porcelain confines of the tub.

It was quiet, though if she concentrated, Grelle could make out the noise of cars and buses and pedestrians several streets over. Kings Cross was one of the most notoriously busy traffic areas in London. The tube station was close, at least. Since they couldn't keep a car and all that. A few birds twittered outside the window, darting forms flashing shadows across the lacey drapes. Another shadow flickered briefly, and with a sound scarcely louder than an exhale, Sebastian arrived in the doorframe.

Silent, he stood and stared at her. Grelle observed him out of the corner of her eye for a moment, then closed them, smiling to herself. She liked being looked at. He liked to look. The room seemed to warm as he stepped inside, leather shoes clicking on the floor, carrying with him the furnace-ember heat of Hell itself. She shifted almost unconsciously, her toes curling, thinking of the intense pleasure it was to keep a demon.

Sebastian sat down on the edge of the tub and the floor groaned in protest.

"Weakest place in the whole house, and they decided to put a bath on it." Grelle flicked open her eyes to smile at Sebastian. "Damned Victorians."

"You know perfectly well the bathtub isn't original," Sebastian replied. He dipped a hand into the water, testing the temperature. "Besides. Being a Georgian doesn't give you the right to criticize our Victorian planning."

" _Your_ Victorian planning?" Grelle laughed. "You're Victorian now?"

"I have always been a Victorian."

Grelle cocked an eyebrow. "Says the man who was summoned to construct cultic temples in Jerusalem ten thousand years ago."

"Mm." The noise was a strange kind of laugh that thrummed through his chest and throat. "He was not Sebastian. This iteration—this Sebastian, _your_ Sebastian—is Victorian."

Sitting up, Grelle leaned over to place a kiss at the base of his wrist, taught as he braced himself against the tub. Those black nails at the tips of his fingers were trendy now, and he displayed them freely. As a _Victorian_ —the word still made her laugh—he'd had to cover them up, but those gloves had driven Grelle no end of crazy. Sometimes she missed them, though there were many more things in their collective pasts that she would not have welcomed the return of, even if it meant the gloves would come back.

"My Sebastian, hm?" she asked, looking up at him.

" _Mmm._ "

That sound was deeper, guttural, purring, generated somewhere within that perfect belly of his. A sound she knew he'd only ever made for her. She kissed his wrist again and Sebastian leaned down, peering into her face for a moment before linking their lips together. He kissed with such sinful, expert skill, his hand in the water rising to take a tentative, slippery hold on her throat. The touch was gentle, lending support to her neck, and she let it slip away as she settled against the sloped side of the tub again, kissing the tips of his fingers as they passed her lips.

She grinned when she lifted her eyes to his face and found him taking her in with hungry fascination. Her head dipped back, the bun weighing heavy, and she settled her shoulders and arms on the rim of the bath.

"No sense of propriety," she said. "Where are your Victorian values?"

Kneeling, Sebastian removed himself from the side of the tub and placed himself on the floor. He took stock of her hand, running his eyes over the curve of her knuckles and the bend in her wrist, before touching a delicate kiss to its back. He touched another to her wrist, then her forearm, then her elbow, and he kissed his way up to her throat and behind her ear, where he let his tongue whisper briefly across her skin.

"I have none," he purred.

Grelle turned to him, rising a little to meet more comfortably across the lip of the tub, pressing a kiss to his warm mouth. As her hands came out of the water to run wet and slick through his hair, his hands dipped in, tracing black nails across her middle and pressing fingers against her ribcage. He dipped a little too far and the water in the tub sloshed dangerously.

"Careful," Grelle said, pushing him back, leaving a hand on his shoulder as she laughed and watched the water settle. "You'll make it overflow."

Sebastian's eyes had not left her face, and when she looked back at him, he maintained that eye contact as he stood and raised his leg over the tub.

"Don't you dare," Grelle said.

A grin slipped onto Sebastian's face as he put both his hands on the side of the tub and leaned further over the water.

"No. Sebastian, no. _No._ "

But her protests meant nothing to him. He put his leg, fully-clothed, shoes, socks, everything, into the tub, raising the water level right to the lip. Then he knelt down and brought his entire body into the bath on all fours, sending the water cascading in a massive splash that seemed to go on for ages over the rim. By the end of it, the little bathroom's floor was covered in an inch of water. Sebastian was soaking wet. Grelle sat shocked, her mouth open.

"This is a _rental_ flat," she gaped.

Sebastian just smiled—that wicked little smile that always made her knees go weak—and skimmed forward through the water to wrap his arms around her and kiss her mouth. She let him, the limited space in the tub pressing their legs and bodies close together. Sebastian turned his lips to her neck, his fingers against her spine. Her own fingers slipped under the wet collar of his dress shirt.

"If that water weakens the floor and we fall through, you're paying for the damages," Grelle said, her hands sliding to his hips.

Sebastian chuckled, lifting his lips for but a moment to murmur, "Damned Victorians," before slinking entirely under the water.


	2. Junk Mail

"In another life I think I would have liked to dance in Cats," Grelle said, out of the bluest of blues as she came back into the house, sorting through the mail.

Sebastian was careful not to overreact. There were several things about that sentence that excited him greatly. His body tensed with the slightest of delighted jolts, and he pointedly did not raise his eyes from the paper copy of The Guardian he'd been perusing like a menu. The newspaper was a veritable smorgasbord of corrupt souls, but he forgot them all, feasting over the image Grelle's declaration had conjured in his mind.

"Oh?" he said, trying to sound the appropriate amount of interested.

She flicked a piece of mail toward him in the tips of her fingers. A junk mailer for what was on at the London Palladium addressed to "The Occupier." Probably everyone on the street had got one. The logo for the aforementioned musical was a prominent feature. Sebastian made sure to give it only a brief glance.

"Oh," he said. He turned his eyes back to the paper, but he couldn't focus on it.

Grelle stepped away, continuing to flip through the mail, sorting it expertly between her fingers. Sebastian watched to make sure she kept the mailer and didn't throw it away with the rest of the advertisements for new exhibits at London museums and coupon booklets for the Lidl and Tesco and Domino's Pizza. She got dangerously close to the recycling with the theatre advertisement. Too close for comfort.

"Can we—" He hesitated, his throat sticking. "Can we go?"

Grelle looked at him. "You want to go see Cats?"

Sheepish, Sebastian nodded, barely raising his eyes over the lip of the paper. Grelle grinned.

"I bought tickets two months ago."

The paper vanished from his hands. Sebastian had soared across the room and scooped his Shinigami off the ground before his mind caught up with his body. He spun Grelle around, arms under her bottom, and she shrieked, giggling as Sebastian came to a stop but did not set her down. Instead he looked up at her, licking his lips.

"What a glorious creature I keep in my house," he said.

Grelle laughed, and that laugh turned into a shriek again as he slung her over his shoulder and carried her giggling up the stairs to their bedroom.


	3. White Roses

The demon loved white roses.

It was damned ridiculous—a creature of Hell smitten and trembling over _white roses._ Sebastian was the stuff of black dahlias, Spanish moss, and pitcher plants, not white roses. White roses were for weddings. For purity, chastity, innocence, but he'd gone dashing across the grass into the rose garden at Regent's Park the second he'd seen them, and had crouched to run his fingers across the petals with the same delicate touch he typically reserved for Grelle's thighs and throat and back. His nails shined black in contrast against the matte velvet of the flower.

"Beautiful," he said, looking up at Grelle as she approached.

"Me or the bush?" Grelle asked, just to rile him, but the roses maintained their sedative effect as Sebastian took hold of her hand and blissfully touched the tips of her fingers to the petals of a rose. She could hear him purring, a sound almost inaudible, more of a feeling on the air than anything else.

"Both," Sebastian replied.

Grelle couldn't get the encounter out of her head. Imagine—a demon, silly over a flower. She wanted to laugh, but the way he'd reacted had also unsettled her. She'd watched the man gore several hundred living beings over the centuries they'd been acquainted, witnessed countless sins and crimes, even been victim to and taken part in them herself. He didn't _deserve_ to get all droopy for a white rose. Neither of them did.

"I know what you're thinking," he'd said as he'd stood and they'd continued their walk through the park. Grelle had simply raised her eyebrows.

"Red roses are better," Sebastian had supplied.

But it wasn't that. Though Grelle did agree that red roses were far superior—a symbol of passion, love, heat; classic in their beauty—it was the tender way Sebastian had looked at the other blooms that had irked her.

That night, Sebastian's bare hips expressive against her own, his teeth and tongue caressing her neck, she wondered about those roses. Wondered about them as she knotted her fingers in his hair. Wondered about them as he pressed her—breast to breast—into their firm mattress. She wanted to understand what it was he liked about them. Wanted to uncover their secret meaning.

The trouble was, they didn't _have_ a secret meaning.

When she asked him about it—at The Photographer's Gallery, while they were there to offer comments on the proposed curation for a series Sebastian had done on media censorship—he'd just laughed, looking at her with one eyebrow raised above the other, dressed in black in a white room surrounded by a sea of his own black and white photographs.

"I like them," he said with a shrug. "That's all."

Grelle tried to let it go. Her annoyance over Sebastian's liking white roses was as ridiculous, if not more, than his liking them in the first place. She knew this, but she couldn't shake it. The irritation clung to her like stink clings to a wet dog. Everywhere she went, a subtle crossness wafted on the air behind her. Sebastian neither noticed nor cared. He carried about his business like Grelle didn't subtly narrow her eyes every time he entered a room, left a room, or commented on the weather like he was actually British.

"Sunny today," he said, leaning to better gaze out their front window.

Grelle didn't look up from the book she was half-reading in the armchair. "I expect you'd like to go for a walk in the park?"

He looked over his shoulder at her, a single side of his mouth curled back in a grin. The expression made Grelle shiver.

"What?" she asked.

"Fetch the lead and take the for dog walkies," Sebastian replied, and laughed when Grelle gave him a hairy scowl.

"You know that's not what I meant," she said.

Sebastian crossed the room in a flash, set his hands on the armrests of Grelle's chair, and leaned into her, his chest pressing her book into her belly.

"Fetch the lead and take the for dog walkies," he repeated, low and lightly menacing.

Grelle looked back at him, cool. "If you want me to buy you a collar, I will."

He laughed again, but this time it matched the tone of his second statement. He brought his mouth to Grelle's and kissed her deep, his tongue along the roof of her mouth.

"I'll be good," he said, pulling back.

So they went to the park. Regent's was only thirty minutes' walk from their doorstep, and Sebastian indeed bounded along like an eager puppy the whole way there. That irked Grelle, too. He was a demon, not a dog. His place was in the shadows, not the sun. She subtly steered their path toward the rose garden to see if his reaction would be the same as it had been last week.

It was.

Sebastian saw the roses and went running, his black hair blowing backwards in his haste. Grelle gritted her teeth and followed. He didn't touch the flowers this time, but he did admire them in adoration, smiling stupidly at the blooms.

"What is it about them?" Grelle asked.

Sebastian shook his head. "They're perfect. Colorless."

"They're _white_."

"Yes."

"You're a _demon_."

"Yes."

He blinked at her like he didn't understand the problem. Grelle huffed, tossing her shoulders.

"You're a demon. You practically run on sin and vice and pain. You _eat_ human souls. What right do you have to think white roses are perfect? _How_ can you think that? You're so covered in blood you should be writhing in nothing but red for the rest of eternity."

Grelle looked at him. Somewhere in his mind during her speech, a penny had dropped.

"This isn't about me, is it?" he asked.

She sucked in a sharp breath, turning from him that same instant and walking away. Sebastian followed.

"This is about you," he said.

A glare was all she deigned to give him as an answer, but it was enough. She increased her pace; Sebastian kept up easily. Eventually he caught her wrist and pulled her to an abrupt stop.

"You don't feel you should be able to enjoy beautiful things," he said, tilting his head to study the furious blush that pushed into her cheeks as she looked away. "Not unless they've been desecrated in some way."

"You know me, Sebastian," she spat. "You know what I've done."

"There are many different kinds of beauty, Grelle," he said. "Past sins don't preclude you from enjoying them."

She shook her head. Angry tears tightened her throat, but she refused to let them fall. She didn't want him to be right. She wanted to be cross—cross with _him_. Not with herself. She didn't want to have projected her own insecurities onto Sebastian, but she knew in her heart that she had, that she was irritated at him for enjoying something so pure and beautiful in such a pure and beautiful way because she had never felt pure and so often had a difficult time feeling beautiful. She shook her head again.

"You wouldn't understand."

"I'd like to."

Grelle scoffed. "Shut up."

Sebastian flinched as though the words had actually harmed him. Grelle took a kind of sick satisfaction from it.

"Shut up," she said again, feeling the bile of her bitter emotions leave her mouth on the words. "Shut up, you _animal_. You will never understand because you cannot understand." She yanked her hand free and stalked away.

Sebastian reached after her. "Grelle—"

" _Shut up!_ "

It was practically a roar as she whirled on him. A hot, angry breath shot out of her mouth. Sebastian froze, his hand extended still in the air in front of him. Grelle turned on her heel and continued down the garden path, her shoes crunching on the gravel. After a moment, his tail tucked between his legs, Sebastian followed.

They didn't speak for the rest of the evening.

A sour feeling settled in Grelle's stomach. She ought not to have yelled at him. It wasn't his fault. He was only trying to help, to try to understand her in his own stupid way. She'd never really been angry with him in the first place. She was angry with herself. And now she was angry with herself for being angry with him over being angry with herself. It was a suffocating emotion that wrung her esophagus tight in her neck like a knotted sock.

Sebastian's exhibition opened at The Photographer's Gallery that weekend. The event was a smash hit, as far as contemporary photographic exhibitions went. Grelle spent the whole launch party feeling sick, sipping champagne though as a Shinigami she could no longer get drunk. She tried to think of some way to make it up to her beautiful demon while she watched him smile and thank people and shake their hands for coming to see the work he had made with those hands. Hands that touched her skin the same way they touched a white rose.

She stifled the little cry that rose in her throat, drowned it under the rest of the contents of her champagne flute. Excusing herself from the gallery floor, she dug her mobile out of her handbag, and made several desperate phone calls.

The party ended late. They caught the last train from Oxford Circus back to Kings Cross, quiet in the rowdy crowd of late-night revelers. They walked in silence to their flat. Grelle's heartrate increased with each step closer to home. Ronald had promised. The florist had been open. She chewed her lip on the doorstep while Sebastian fished his keys from his pocket and pushed open their robin's egg door.

The front room was full of white roses. Nine, maybe ten bouquets of two dozen or more a piece. All that the florist had had and Ronald had been able to transport over in the time before the party had ended. Grelle owed her junior now for wrecking what would have otherwise been a decent Friday night.

Sebastian stood and stared, his lips parted. His eyes roved from bouquet to bouquet in the soft darkness.

"Congratulations," Grelle whispered.

He made no reply, though his eyes were alight.

"And I'm sorry," she added.

Sebastian stepped into the house and Grelle shut the door behind them. He didn't seem able to take his eyes off the flowers. His head swiveled all around the room as he took them in. After a moment, his fingers settled on one of the buds and he turned to look at Grelle.

"You were right," she said. "And I shouldn't have spoken to you the way that I did."

He held her eye, processing for a moment. Grelle had nothing more to say, so she went quiet. Sebastian glanced back at the flowers. He circled his finger around the mouth of the bud, tapped it twice. Then, as Grelle watched, he pulled the flower from the vase, held the bud over the floor and crushed it in his hands.

"What are you doing?" Grelle asked, startled by the sudden, violent action. She'd actually taken a step forward in alarm.

Sebastian let the petals fall from his hand, scattering them across the floor. He reached back, plucked another rose from the vase, and pulled that one apart, too. Its petals joined its sister on the ground.

"Sebastian, stop—"

He silenced her by raising his hand. Grelle trembled, swallowing over a painful lump in her throat, as he took a third rose and dispersed it in pieces.

"I love white roses," he said and looked at her finally. "And you…" He came forward, brushed his fingers across her clavicle, and pulled her close. "…cannot love anything until it's properly desecrated."

His hands slid beneath her dress, up her thighs and he lifted her in his arms to lower her to the ground. Startled, hot, Grelle let him. Her red hair fell across the floor and tangled with the white, fallen petals. Sebastian pressed a hungry kiss to her jaw.

"So help me desecrate these flowers."


	4. Northerners

Grelle looked incredibly fetching in a swimsuit.

She was freezing. That was clear enough, her skin pricked in near-permanent gooseflesh, but Sebastian would never tell her to put on a jumper. He was enjoying the view. She wouldn't have done regardless. A matter of pride. After all, she had been the one who had insisted they holiday in Scarborough instead of Brighton because, quote, "Every bloody boring Londoner goes to Brighton and we are not every bloody boring Londoner."

No matter that Scarborough was three hundred miles north and therefore three hundred miles colder.

Her teeth chattered when the wind rose off the sea to ravage the beach, and she clenched them, determined, but Sebastian could hear them tremble even as they clenched, in part because his hearing superseded human bounds, but mostly because he was listening for it. He nearly chuckled, but kept it down.

She had been so indignant about Scarborough, so certain that it was the ideal vacation destination. It had everything that Brighton had, she'd told him, with sand instead of rocks, and a castle to boot, and there wouldn't be any London weekenders. Scarborough did have the things she'd said, but what it lacked in Londoners it made up for in northerners from Manchester and Leeds, Wakefield and York. And if there was one thing Grelle hated more than southerners, it was northerners.

Her tongue clicked as a group of teenagers with loud, broad Manchurian accents went running for the sea, hollering and pulling their shirts off and already hurling expletives about how cold the water was going to be. She'd been annoyed with just about everyone since they'd arrived—from the Uber driver to the poor woman behind the desk at the hotel. Sebastian liked the north, the northerners, their friendly northern accents. He'd been enjoying his holiday far more than he thought he would. In no small part because of how little Grelle was enjoying hers.

The teens came screeching back from the water dripping wet and slapping each other with their sopping t-shirts. Grelle rolled her eyes and scoffed.

"Where did you think you were? Bermuda?"

Sebastian propped up on his elbows. "Do you know what shares the North Sea with Scarborough?" he asked.

Grelle looked down at him. "What?" The word nearly caught on a shiver that went through her.

"Norway."

Pursing her lips, Grelle turned her unamused gaze back out at the water. Sebastian rolled onto his stomach to put himself closer to her, but stayed on his elbows, facing away from the water toward the shopfronts and leisure centers.

"We may want to rent an umbrella," he said. "In case the sun comes out."

Grelle did not reply, but he noticed her stiffen out of the corner of his eye.

"Can I get you an ice cream?"

"S-stop it."

She was cursing even as the shiver interrupted her and Sebastian laughed outright. It earned him a fiery glare. He tried to slip a pair of fingers under the top of her bikini, but she flicked him away. Chuckling, he went after the strings that tied the bottom together instead and she squawked in protest, smacking her entire forearm across his shoulders. He gave up the game, settling his chin in the sand and snaking an arm around her waist instead. She'd let him stay because he was warm. He was certain of it.

He felt Grelle weigh the options, the muscles in her stomach tight, but he was patient. After a moment, she sighed, the muscles relaxed, and she leaned back onto her elbows.

"You sure you don't want any ice cream?"

Growling, she tried to sit up to get away from him, but Sebastian clamped his arm around her waist and pulled her close, pushing a sloppy kiss to the place below her arm where bikini ended and skin began. She struggled to get out of his grasp, complaining, then shouting and redoubling her efforts to escape when his teeth found the side string for her top and pulled.

With one powerful shove, Grelle got away, the elastic fabric snapping against her skin. She positively _glared_ at Sebastian. Her face was nearly as red as her hair. All around them the other beachgoers were hooting and whistling and shouting things like, "Take a pho'o uh tha'!" in their wonderful accents. If he'd tried the same thing in Brighton, the show would only have earned him petulant, disgusted stares. Yes, Sebastian liked the north very much.

Grelle snatched her beach bag off the sand and dug her jumper out, pulling her head through the turtleneck with an embarrassed huff. She folded her arms across her chest, glowering, though she already looked more comfortable. Sebastian smiled, lying peacefully against the sand.

Grelle looked incredibly fetching in a sweater.


	5. Recreation

Sebastian slept so rarely that when Grelle got up to nip to the toilet one night and found him stretched out on the sheets beside her still—his eyes shut, his breathing slow—she nearly fell out of bed. All the same, she was careful not to wake him. He was particular about sleep.

Sleep. The thought made her snort as she rose and went into the bathroom. He didn't even need sleep. He'd described it to her once as "recreation." Grelle had snorted at that, too. Other people played golf and cricket. Sebastian slept.

She wondered where it was demons went to dream as she returned to their room and lingered in the doorway. Sebastian lay on his stomach, naked across the top of the sheets like a woman in an Impressionist painting—all pale skin and perfect proportions surrounded by silk. That painful beauty of his was subdued in his sleep. His face relaxed. His jaw soft. The moon coupled with the orange streetlights cast a dreamy glow across every dip and curve of the muscles in his back. Those legs that carried on into tomorrow. His bloody flawless ass.

As she looked, Grelle noticed that the edges of his form had started to fuzz. The effect was slight, almost as though he'd simply gone out of focus. Along those unfocused edges, a deep, dark mist emerged and curled, like smoke curls up from the kindling of a fire. Grelle smiled. Hard to control one's appearance while unconscious.

She made her way to the bed and sat carefully beside his feet. The shadows danced toward her in the air. She reached after one and curled it around her finger. The creature of smoke and sludge that was Sebastian's true form was curiously corporeal. Shadows that could lift and touch and hold just as easily as they could change their shape and take on a thousand faces, behold the world through a thousand eyes. The tendril she'd curled around her finger was soft against her skin, but hot like steam rising off a furnace or those wavy lines that roil desert air. She could only hold onto it for a moment before it began to burn.

Letting go, Grelle glanced up toward Sebastian's face—half-buried in a pillow around which he'd wrapped his arms. She took another tendril and pressed it between her fingers, drawing them along its length, beginning to end, where she let it slip loose. Sebastian stirred a little, his toes curling, his mouth opening to allow a glimpse at teeth that now—in this looser form—were every one of them every bit as sharp as her own. Grelle smiled and moved further onto the mattress.

She traced a single finger across Sebastian's skin, from the curve of his heel up every inch to the base of his neck. He stirred again, his somnambulant shadows coiling toward her, wrapping themselves sleepily around her outstretched arm. She eased them off, and they slipped over her hand like a set of bracelets. She put her hand on his lower back, smoothed her fingers up the strait of his spine. Like touching heated marble. Where an ordinary body would have given way, Sebastian was solid. Perhaps it was the compression of his demon form into a human shape. An immaculate human shape. A human shape she couldn't help taking in greedily as she let her hand drift up and down the path of his spine, up and down, up over his shoulder, down a little lower than she should have. It wasn't fair that all he had to do was sleep to look the way he did, that sleep could be his "recreation," but Grelle could not have cared less what was fair and what was not because she was a partaker in those looks. In the sharp line of his nose. In his thick eyelashes. In those pretty, pretty teeth.

Leaning over, Grelle touched a kiss to Sebastian's shoulder blade, his shadows curling out of her way to let it happen. He woke then, just a little. Just enough for those thick, thick lashes to flutter open and release the red-purple light of his demon eyes to the room. Just enough for those eyes to smile and show those teeth—to crinkle the line of his nose.

He was so damned elegant in his sleep. A top recreational athlete.


	6. TS Eliot

Had someone asked Sebastian why he stayed with Grelle, he would not have known what to say. His silence would not have been born out of shock or offense, mild surprise or even uncertainty. No, he would keep his mouth closed because he knew well that there were not words above the earth or within to truly describe what it was that tied him to the reaper.

It was the delicate way she treated her dry cleaning. It was the four unsettling lemon wedges squeezed over her fish and chips. It was the bright blood color of her hair, the unsubtle glances across crowded rooms, the way she chose to steady herself on the bus or the train by hanging onto him instead of the handles. It was the way his name sounded when their bodies tangled together and he forced it from her lips.

"Sebastian… Sebastian."

Comic how the moniker he had once despised had become a permanent facet of his identity. Oh, he had his other names certainly. Asgaheth, his name in Hell, the collection of Hebrew syllables that had first summoned him to the human world. Asgaheth— _devourer_ —though that was a recent translation. The word had only ever really had one meaning, one definition, had only been used to describe one thing, and that was Sebastian himself.

He had his third name, rather like that poem by T.S. Eliot, he thought in amusement, "but the cat himself knows and will never confess." Grelle knew neither of these. No one outside of Sebastian knew his third name at all. It belonged only to him, more even than Asgaheth, and yet, the demon thought of himself as Sebastian.

Sebastian— _venerable_ —a name given to hundreds of thousands of weak and dying human beings. A name borrowed off a dog.

A name Grelle called him.

"Sebastian. _Sebastian_ …"

Sebastian fixed his hands firm against the white rose skin of Grelle's hips to steady them over his own. She was perfect. Divine. The whole lot from the sounds in her mouth to the way her fingers fluttered across the backs his hands to take hold of him as he held her—and they held onto each other, synchronous. Together in every movement, until she rested against his crooked up legs, lifted his hands from her hips to her face and whispered, "I love you," into his palms.

Sebastian did not know if he knew what love was. He knew how recklessly he worshiped her. He knew the thought of their ever separating filled him with a horrid dread. He knew that sense of pride which inflamed his heart each time he discovered the red prints stung into the skin of his hips and waist where her hands had been. The same pride which led him to let the hand prints linger on his human form rather than dismissing them as he did most other imperfections. They were a marker—the red stamp of the red reaper: property of.

Was that love? The sensation of your entire being belonging to someone else, someone to whom you had chosen to belong? He felt possessed of her, desperate for her attention though she lavished it upon him. Hungry for the refreshment of her wintry reaper's body no matter how often she gave and gave.

He supposed that was as close to love as a demon might come, so he sat up, drew her into his arms, pressed her forehead to his shoulder and replied:

"I love you, too."

Grelle smiled, her lips brushing across his clavicle, and she kissed him. Sebastian let his hands wander, his arms envelope her waist. Grelle settled close, her heartbeat sensible against his chest. He'd always found it strange—that a dead thing such as she should have a beating heart. That a base creature like himself should delight in it.

His was the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock—the yellow smoke that licked its tongue into the evening's corners, the etherized patient, the oyster shells upon the sawdust. The thing that rubbed its back on windowpanes and wore prepared faces. Crafted by a man who had fooled the ignorant generations to follow into believing that he was, indeed, British.

The only exception was that Sebastian dared to disturb the universe.

He was a wasteland. Roots clutching in stony rubbish, dead trees of broken images that offered little shelter. The winter fog's brown dawn, a death that had undone so many, and yet he cultured in that wasteland a single, red bloom.

By all accounts it should have been impossible.

Grelle leaned away from him so she could look into his eyes. Her own were so strange and glorious in their phosphorescence. They almost glowed, but it was a reflection of light rather than a generation of it. Like a cat or a deer caught in headlights. Sebastian looked back at her, then he smiled.

"Yes?"

A little air left her lungs. "Why do you stay with me?" she asked.

In answer he gave her that silence that he'd always known he would give, but it was saturated with words that did not exist, words no one knew but himself, words that described only one thing:

His deep and inscrutable, singular, Grelle.


	7. Wax Candles

The Tesco across the street at the end of Keystone Crescent had precisely one booth in the entire store that was dedicated to birthday party supplies. Grelle found herself standing in front of it, puzzling, while Sebastian chatted with a young woman, one of those damned bloody hipsters with a lip piercing and a silly hat, who had recognized his face from a picture at a recent exhibition. Grelle might have minded more the painfully obvious attempts the girl made to flirt with her demon had she not been distracted in suddenly calculating her own age after coming across an array of wax candles shaped like numbers.

"…admire your work. It's so provoc—"

"Would you like to have a birthday party, darling?" Grelle asked, reaching behind her and blindly slapping her hand across Sebastian's elbow a few times to get his attention.

"Hm?" Sebastian turned from the young woman and must have noticed the display of candles and hats and confetti and things because he chuckled knowingly. "If you'd like," he said.

"I would."

Grelle grinned. She selected several rolls of streamers as Sebastian excused himself from his conversation with the girl and leaned against the shelving. He watched Grelle gather a mountain of supplies into her arms, red eyes following her arms in their red sleeves.

"Have I got myself into something?" he asked with a grin.

Grelle stood onto her tiptoes and kissed that smile.

"Most definitely."

The date was set for a week from that Friday. Presents would be exchanged. Cake would be had. Grelle set all the goods on a clear shelf in the kitchen pantry, and as she went to grab a carton of eggs several days later, she noticed the set of wax candles she'd purchased in the shape of a two, a six, and a one, and realized she hadn't bought candles for Sebastian. Nor did she have any idea what those numbers should have been.

"Love," she said, coming out of the pantry. Sebastian looked up from his place at the stove. "How old are you?"

He shrugged. He _shrugged_. He took the carton of eggs out of her hand and _shrugged_.

"I'm not certain," he replied. "Demons are eternal beings. We do not measure time in human bounds."

He cracked a few eggs into the pan on the stovetop and stirred to scramble them. Grelle watched with mild interest, curious less at the skillful movement of his hands and more at how he could pontificate on "human bounds" while he was quite literally making scrambled eggs. She moved closer to him, hugged their hips close, slid a hand under his shirt and massaged her fingers against his stomach.

"Tell me," she said.

He laughed. "I'm not keeping it a secret, Grelle. I honestly don't know."

Sebastian laughed again when Grelle pursed her lips. She clicked her tongue at him and moved away. She wanted an answer. It wouldn't do to have a cake without any candles on. But no matter how many times she pressed and pressed, the answer was always the same.

"I don't know."

By the fiftieth time she'd asked, Grelle arrived at the conclusion that it wasn't that Sebastian didn't _know_ , but that he couldn't be bothered to figure it out. Do the time conversion from demon to human, or whatever. His impertinence annoyed her, but so did most everything else he did in the name of being cheeky, so she let it go, but every time she looked at those candles in the pantry, a frown would cross her mouth.

"What year was it when you were first summoned?" she asked one night when she couldn't get the notion out of her head. The party was only a few days away.

Sebastian poked his head out of the tiny closet where he was dressing for bed and raised an eyebrow at her. She was seated on the edge of the mattress, absently rubbing lotion into her arms. She didn't need it—a Shinigami's enhanced body never had skin that was dry—but she liked the scent.

"Haven't the slightest. Why?" he responded.

She just scowled at him.

Sebastian laughed. "What?"

"Would it kill you to cooperate with me for once?"

Smiling, Sebastian left the closet and perched himself beside her on the mattress to touch a kiss behind her ear. Grelle maintained her scowl all the same, so he took the lotion bottle out of her hands and laced their fingers together.

"Why does it matter?" he asked, letting his voice drop into that low, purring register. She was determined not to let it work on her.

"Because," she replied, indignant but blushing as he glided his hands down her legs and pressed a kiss to her throat, "the whole point of a birthday is to celebrate how long you've been alive. It's a _birth_ day."

"I was not born," he said. He drew back to look at her, blinked, and showed the true glow of his demon's eyes. "And I have always existed."

Perhaps that was the problem. Grelle could not truly process "eternity." She had _become_ a Shinigami, and though she was technically immortal—no aging, no getting sick, no dying of natural causes—she _could_ be killed. And being a Shinigami did not necessarily mean living for forever. She was working to pay off the debt she'd incurred in taking her own life by collecting the lives of others. That had a definitive end, a goal to be reached. Even if it was ridiculously far away it was still there, and even if she never reached it and her life continued on for the rest of time, her life had begun at a definitive point along that line. Sebastian's life had no end, _nor_ a beginning. It simply _was_.

And always had been.

She looked at those eyes of his—the shifting hues of luminous red and purple and other colors she could not name. He blinked, and the colors were gone, replaced instead by that dull, perhaps-mistakable-for-brown hue that felt only slightly inhuman.

"Are the candles really so important to you?" he asked.

"It isn't the candles, it's the principle of the thing," Grelle replied. She supposed she couldn't expect him to understand either, really. Just as Grelle could not comprehend his infinite lifetime, he could not comprehend putting stock into the marking of years by the orbit of the earth.

"What about 1901, then?" He traced a lazy circle on her thigh. "Sort of a 'born again' year for me, I think."

"You can't pick 1901 for your birth year," she replied with a huff.

He chuckled. "And why not?"

"Because that would make me more than a hundred years older than you and I am _not_ a cougar."

Sebastian laughed outright, loud and barking, and Grelle's mouth fell open in offense. She smacked his shoulder and pushed him away, settling her face into a deep scowl she was certain would never wash off. She flicked a glare out of the corner of her eye for good measure. Sebastian just smiled an irritating, amused smile.

"Agree to disagree, then," he said.

Her eyes flashed and she turned her face toward him, fuming now, ready to give him another good whack across the chest, but he caught her arm and used it as an anchor to pull himself close.

"You can put whatever you want on top of my cake, Grelle."

"Sounds like a really shite innuendo," she replied, bitter still. She turned her face away, but he put his lips to her jaw, undeterred.

"It can be, if you want," he said, and when he laughed, the sound thrummed through her cheek and vibrated in her ear. He was so warm, so strong. She shut her eyes and went liquid as he touched his tongue, very gently, to the corner of her lips.

"I hate you, you know that?" she said, but the venom was lost in the whisper.

"Hmm," he replied. "Anything as long as it's passionate."


	8. Cake & Presents

Sebastian made a show of indulging Grelle but, like any good show, it was filled with remarkable acting. The truth was he _didn't_ indulge her. He _liked_ to go along with her schemes, play her games, do all the strange, human things she constantly cooked up for them to do. They fascinated him, and he'd become rather attached to their life together over the years. So much so, in fact, that when their little group of friends sang "Happy Birthday" and Grelle brought out a cake for him with a repurposed candle on the top—a number eight which she'd turned on its side into the symbol for infinity—his heart pinched for a split second in an emotion he could only describe as sentiment.

She'd made him sentimental.

He'd blown out the candle and their friends had clapped. They'd cut the cake, eaten it, consumed several bottles of wine, and said goodbye to everyone before it got much later. Now he sat with Grelle on their sofa, watching the fire burn in the hearth. She had herself curled up right beside him.

"Can we do presents now?" she asked.

Sebastian laughed. They'd kept the party casual and, not wanting to make any of the guests feel guilty for having brought nothing, had agreed to exchange presents after they'd gone home. Sebastian was baffled by the whole thing in general—why give someone a gift simply for living another year, a unit of time so arbitrary he hardly understood even _that_ —but he had agreed. Under the guise of feeling put out and pestered, but of course he had agreed.

"If you insist," he said.

Grelle rolled her eyes. "You first."

"And why not you?"

"Because mine is on its way," she replied, "and ladies should always receive their presents first."

Sebastian smiled, sitting up to kiss her. "Benevolent sexism, don't you think?"

"Just give me the bloody gift already."

Laughing, Sebastian dipped into his pocket where he'd been keeping his present since he'd found Grelle poking around the various drawers of their dresser. She couldn't be trusted, naturally, and he'd discovered her before she'd found the small, black velvet box which he placed in her hands then.

In the few seconds before Grelle lifted the lid, Sebastian found himself surprisingly nervous. Grelle had a particular taste, and while it didn't necessarily make her hard to shop for, it did mean that she would either love what was given to her or hate it, and in the limbo between his passing her the gift and her opening it, Sebastian suddenly doubted his ability to choose something on the first end of that scale.

But he didn't have to worry. Grelle's mouth fell open and she drew in an excited breath. Inside the box was a pair of ruby earrings—two gems each, pear cut, one dangling from the point of the other, and all four stones surrounded by borders of tiny diamonds. Grelle looked at him, her hand on her heart, her eyes wet.

"Sebastian, they're _beautiful._ "

He smiled and accepted the kiss she leaned forward to give him. Then a particular presence entered his radius and Sebastian's heart stopped entirely.

Grelle's phone went off.

She picked it up.

"Ah," she said. "Othello's here."

Sebastian almost couldn't breathe. Was that—had she—was there? His pulse came back with rapid fire, making him dizzy, making his breath come quick. He knew that presence, he _knew_ it, but he couldn't believe—

Then Grelle went to the front door and opened it up to Othello who was jaunting up the stairs on their stoop with an animal carrier in his hands.

A cat.

Sebastian materialized in front of Othello and the crate, his face right next to the crisscrossed gate on the front. Othello jumped back, startled and laughing, and he said something about how Grelle hadn't been kidding, but Sebastian didn't really hear the words because he was too focused instead on the beautiful creature inside the crate.

A British Shorthair with a blue coat and gorgeous rust colored eyes. Every bit of it was round—its perfect ears, its perfect face, its perfect, fat little body. Wide jowls and chipmunk cheeks, a short neck and nose. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

"Sebastian, this is Augustus," Grelle said, and she put her hand on his shoulder, but he didn't really feel it. "He's a rescue. Othello's been keeping him at his place because, well…"

"Your cat senses are crazy, mate," Othello chuckled.

The reaper passed Sebastian the crate and Sebastian absently floated into the living room to set it down and open the gate. Othello asked Grelle if she would help him unload the rest of the supplies from his car, and she agreed, but Sebastian wasn't listening. He crouched down in front of the crate, his eyes locked on the cat, and he grinned—couldn't _stop_ grinning.

" _Salve, Augustus,_ " he said. " _Quid agis?_ "

The cat locked eyes on him and Sebastian's heart stopped all over again. He gasped when Augustus stood up, gasped when he took his first steps outside the crate. It was all Sebastian could do not to grab the perfect creature and squash it against his chest, crazed by that strange compulsion that made beings want to crush something for being cute. He offered a tentative hand instead, and when Augustus padded forward and pressed his head into Sebastian's palm, the demon couldn't resist the urge any longer. He snatched Augustus up and hugged him, letting out an undisciplined squeal-like purr.

Augustus, as befitted royalty, was not keen on being handled and wriggled out of Sebastian's grasp with an indignant meow. Sebastian sat and watched with amazement as the cat explored his new surroundings, sniffing, tensing at new sounds.

By the time Sebastian looked up, Grelle and Othello had unloaded several bags of litter, several more of food, a box of toys, a box for the litter, a pet bed, and a carpeted cat tree. He hadn't the slightest how long that must have taken them. Grelle laughed when she saw Sebastian lying on the floor on his stomach, his chin pressed into the carpet so he could see Augustus under the couch.

"Hello, darling," she said.

He materialized in front of her this time, taking her face into his hands and kissing her deeply. He would never find the right kiss to quite convey how he felt—how he felt about _feeling_ anything at all—but he tried. Oh, he tried.

"Chr _ist_ ," Othello chuckled. "Looks like you picked the right gift, then."

Grelle started to pull back, but Sebastian snatched a few more nipping kisses from her lips before letting her go. He held her eye, nestled their noses side by side and held her close.

" _Perfect_ ," he purred.

Grelle smiled. "You're welcome." She shifted back then and gave him a nudge, nodding toward Augustus who was emerging from underneath the sofa and padding toward them. "Go on then, love."

Sebastian bent and scooped the cat— _his_ cat—into his arms.


	9. Stitches

Grelle had never truly forgotten about the case she kept hidden at the back of the top shelf in their closet, but she did like to pretend. She had nearly succeeded in forgetting until the Thursday afternoon when she lost Augustus for a number of hours and finally found him asleep on that top shelf. On top of the case as a matter of fact.

Her breath caught in her throat when she reached up to retrieve him and saw where he was. It made an odd sound, particularly since she'd been about to sigh in relief at having not actually lost Sebastian's cat. But finding him there made her spiteful.

"Get up," she scolded, poking the fat shorthair until he awoke. "And get down, or I'll tell Sebastian I named you after Augustus Gloop and not the Roman emperor."

Sebastian had been chattering away in Latin at the cat since Grelle had brought him home, and she hadn't had the heart to tell him that the cat's weight and not his apparent nobility had inspired the name. Augustus stood up to stretch, but he was moving far too slowly for Grelle, so she grabbed him and hauled him from the closet.

"Bad kitty," she said, and shut the closet door.

But cats are like liquid, and it was only a matter of days before she found Augustus up there again, sleeping sprawled on top of the case. Maybe she'd closed the door on him, or maybe he'd found his way in on his own, but he was up there, and he sparked Grelle's ire a second time.

"I don't want the cat in the closet," she said to Sebastian while he was cooking dinner.

"He hardly sheds, Grelle," Sebastian replied, smiling down at Augustus as the cat rubbed against his leg. Then he cooed, "Do you?"

Scowling, Grelle bent over and ran her hand along Augustus's back and off his tail, collecting a wad of fur which she rose to show to Sebastian.

"Well, naturally there's going to be _something_ ," he replied.

Grelle rolled her eyes and wiped the fur on his shoulder to punctuate her point, but of course Sebastian didn't care. Grelle had had to take a lint roller to the demon every time he tried to leave the house because he was simply too enamored with Augustus to notice the grey fur that stood out on his black clothing. Grelle would have been lying if she'd said she didn't adore Augustus herself. She did, he was a darling, but she did wish the top shelf of the closet wasn't his favorite place for a nap.

She kept finding him there, day after day, no matter how thoroughly she checked to make sure he wasn't in when she closed the door. Those rust colored eyes would always open, and their pupils constrict in the sudden light, almost every time she got into the closet.

Eventually, the daily reminders became too much.

Grelle hurried upstairs to fetch a different pair of shoes—she and Sebastian were headed to a viewing for a commercial gallery space of his own—and she was already running late after a difficult day at Dispatch—a day she'd spent trying to recover some misfiled souls and taking the blame for everyone else's mistakes—and when she opened the closet, there was Augustus. Asleep. On top of that case.

Her throat constricted.

"Get out, Augustus."

The cat did not stir.

"Get out."

He opened his eyes.

"Get _out_."

He sat up.

" _Get out._ "

But he did not move.

"Get out, _get out, GET OUT!_ " Grelle cried, and she grabbed the case and wrenched it from the closet. Augustus tumbled out as well, landing on his feet with a heavy thud, and Grelle hurled the case across the room. The bang it made when it connected with the wall sent the cat scrambling out the door.

"Grelle?" Sebastian's worried voice called up the stairs. "What was that? Are you all right?"

She gasped in a breath to respond, but instead of words, a cry came out, and it was followed by a few tears. In a matter of moments, Sebastian had appeared in the doorway, tying his tie around his throat and frowning. The frown deepened when he saw the state she was in.

"My love?"

Grelle gasped in another breath, shaking her head, wiping her face, and bending over to dig a pair of heels out of the closet. She went to slip them on her feet, but Sebastian intervened, softly taking them away. She grabbed them back and shoved her feet inside, sweeping out of the room before he had a chance to protest.

"We're already late," she said.

They went to the viewing, and Grelle was a wreck through the whole thing. Not the best impression to give a commercial realtor, but they had the funds at least to subvert the crazy. She thought she'd gathered herself well enough by the time they returned home, but she hadn't. When she went upstairs, Sebastian had retrieved the case from wherever it had fallen and placed it, open, on the end of the bed.

Inside was a red Victorian coat with black trim.

Tears filled Grelle's eyes. She could hardly bear the sight of it, but she was drawn toward it all the same—a moth to a flame. The fabric was more than a century old, but Grelle had ensured it was properly cared for. Blood-red wool. A black silk bow. Above that bow a line of stitches she had carefully sewn herself. Stitches that closed a hole _she_ had put there with the blades of her chainsaw.

Like the hole she had put in the coat's original owner.

A few of the tears slipped down her face as she sat on the edge of the bed, took the coat from the case, and ran her fingers along those stitches.

"Madam…" she whispered to herself.

"I had no idea you kept that," Sebastian said, suddenly in the doorway.

"How could I get rid of it?" Grelle asked—a little bitter, a little tearful. It was a reminder of who she once had been, the things she once had done. It hurt to see it—like a knife in the heart it hurt—but she needed that hurt to remember, to make penance. To keep Angelina close so she wouldn't make the same mistake again.

"Why?" Sebastian asked, but Grelle could only shake her head.

He came into the room, sat carefully beside her, and touched a kiss to her temple.

"I remember you in this coat," he said with another kiss to her cheek. "And the night you took it."

Grelle snorted. "How could you forget?"

"You were beautiful even then, though perhaps I did not realize. Disgusting and beautiful."

She shook her head, but he wouldn't have that. He took her chin in his hands and held her still, his eyes intense and focused on her face. Grelle could not bring herself to look at him. She could look only at the coat, at those stitches, at the memories of rain and blood that came with them.

"Put it on," Sebastian said.

The suggestion dug that knife deeper into her heart and twisted. "I can't," Grelle whispered, but Sebastian was merciless in pulling her to her feet and pressing the coat into her arms as she tried to leave it on the bed.

"This is who you were, Grelle, you cannot change that, so you must embrace it."

Grelle clutched the fabric.

"We've both done things we are ashamed of," he added.

Grelle's hands trembled. That wasn't it. She wasn't ashamed. Shame was a painful feeling about how one appeared to others. Shame was selfish. What Grelle was was guilty. She felt so acutely the unimagined wrongs she had committed against other people. It was guilt she felt, not shame. So she folded the coat back up, placed it in the case, and put the case back in the closet.

"Thank you, Sebastian," she said as she turned to face the room, "for trying to understand."

His head was cocked to one side and he regarded her with one eyebrow raised above the other. Grelle stepped toward him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"It's something I need to hold at arms' length," she said.

Sebastian frowned, taking her face in his hand and stroking her cheek. After a moment of study and silence, he nodded. "All right."

Grelle let out a sigh through her nose and rested her head on his shoulder. He put his arms around her and they stood in the quiet until Augustus padded in and mewed, having found his people. Grelle crouched to offer an apologetic hand to the cat.

"I'm sorry I was cross with you, darling," she said, and much to her relief Augustus approached her and pressed his head into her palm. "You did nothing wrong."

Sebastian frowned, opening his mouth, and Grelle could sense the beginnings of him getting ready to ask when she'd been cross with Augustus and what warranted an apology, so she picked the cat up, rose, and gave Sebastian a peck on the lips to keep him quiet. Then she went to the closet and held Augustus up so he could step from her arms and onto the case. He curled up, tucking his hands underneath his body and shutting his eyes. Grelle smiled.

Perhaps a daily reminder was for the best.


	10. Dark Room

The first thing Sebastian installed in the new studio was a dark room. He hadn't produced film photography in a decade, at least, and he missed it. Much to his chagrin.

Few things elicited the passion of demons—a backwards kind of irony given the fact that they were some of the most single-minded, obsessive creatures in existence. Most of them focused on obtaining their next meal, otherworldly abilities poured into the hunt and the base things required to snare their prey. So much energy—life, _passion_ —wasted unartfully chasing after souls.

Sebastian had not had to participate in that chase for over a hundred years now, thanks to Grelle and that deal she'd struck with the Shinigami. No, Sebastian's meals were practically delivered to him—dangerous souls the reapers _wanted_ destroyed—so he'd had to find other outlets for that demonic passion.

Grelle was one of them, naturally. He poured so much of himself into her, but Grelle could only contain so much. She was an autonomous individual, a creature with her own needs and will, desire and passions. To have put every ounce of his being into her would have destroyed them both. They'd worked out the right balance over the years, and their devotion ran deep—deeper than either of them could put to words—but Sebastian had always been restless in other ways.

He'd tried countless things to keep himself occupied—interior decorating, furniture building, pigeon breeding, taxi driving, mill work, meat processing—and had held countless jobs—elevator operator, river cruise guide, clerk, haberdasher at Selfridge's—but none of it had ever stuck until photography. Until Grelle had bought him that MPP Micro Technical and ordered him out of the house and out of her hair for the afternoon.

It was meticulous work. Detail work. Composing the shot. Adjusting the aperture, the shutter speed. Shielding the lens from the sun or perhaps reflecting light onto his subject. It was work that could consume him—so he let it.

He left the house that day as James Fentz, his latest alias, Leica M6 and tripod in hand, no particular goal in mind outside of shooting some images of the city that he would develop in cyanotype. He walked an hour all the way to Westminster, came to a stop on the corner across from the Houses of Parliament, at the end of the bridge, his back to the Thames, and spent a moment observing the ebb and the flow of the crowd as he slowly set up his equipment. Tourists, mostly. Might make for an interesting subject.

The deliberate and purposeful way he went about the business of adjusting his settings and framing the shot inevitably drew attention from the humans around him. Fentz was known for his meticulousness and quiet smile. He looked like he belonged there. Like he was doing something important.

He was.

And he wasn't.

Since the nineteen fifties, Sebastian had pursued various careers as various artists in the field of photography. He had long since learned the formula to look convincing. The Tate Modern even had a few of his pieces in their collection. Not on display, of course, and not under the name "Sebastian Michaelis," but the works were his and they might emerge from storage eventually. In fact, he'd been weaving quite an elaborate tapestry throughout the years—fabricating new artists to use as aliases, intentionally linking them together through rivalry or influence. Leisel van Gott had trained Jeffery Nash, and Jeffery Nash had inspired Frederick Dowd. Dowd had opened the studio from which Sam Whitehall had emerged, and the line continued, iteration after iteration. They were all Sebastian, and it was his intention that someday the Tate Modern would curate a special exhibition collecting works from all those influential photographers together. So many artists—but every picture taken by his own hands.

He stood in that spot at one end of Westminster Bridge for several hours, periodically taking photographs dominated by an out-of-focus crowd in motion, Parliament behind them, in-focus but overrun. Yes, he could do a whole series like this. London landmarks obscured by tourists. Eventually, he ran out of film and made his way to the new studio.

In the dark room, the white cotton tea towels he had prepped for his experiment had dried after their soak in the appropriate solution. He readied his film negatives, careful and quiet, absorbed in the work of developing and processing each reel.

He was about to start the contact sheet when there was a knock at the door.

"Mm," he responded, knowing it was Grelle.

She slipped in, only opening the door a fraction and squeezing through like she was worried about letting the darkness out.

"So this is where you are," she chuckled. "You could answer your phone, you know."

"What time is it?" Sebastian asked.

"Half eight," Grelle replied.

Sebastian turned to apologize, the time had completely escaped him, but he found Grelle inspecting the reels of film hanging from their hooks along the wall for drying and the view of her illuminated only by the red light of the dark room was so exquisite, it actually forced him to take a step back.

"These are interesting," Grelle said as she observed the negatives. "Are you going to print them on those tea towels?"

She turned to look his way, a smile on her face, and Sebastian's heartbeat staggered. She was red, she was _red_ —all over red. The color of her aura, her very soul. It was mystic. Red skin, red clothes, red eyes, red teeth. A thousand shades of nuance, but _red_. He'd never seen her in a dark room before. He'd never seen her so beautiful. So…pure. It was like she'd been boiled down to her essence and reformed from that vibrant solution alone.

"You could make mock souvenirs," Grelle said and laughed. "Like those tea towels they sell in tourist shops."

He stepped toward her, eyes roving over every inch of the figure she cut in the cavernous light. It was then she finally seemed to notice the state he was in, and she chuckled again, her brows drawing together in amusement.

"What's got into you?"

In answer, he brushed his fingers across her cheek, took hold of her neck with his other hand, drew himself near to her and studied—studied _hard_ —trying to lift that red light from her skin, to separate her from it and turn her back into the creature he was familiar with, but he could not. She had melded with it, and he would see a flash of her in red every time he looked at her from that moment on. The image was too perfect, too impactful, to forget.

He slotted their lips together and pressed her between himself and the table against the wall. She made this little noise in the back of her mouth that curled that heavy grip of desire in his abdomen even tighter than it already was.

He would swear—and he knew that it was only his imagination, but he would swear—that she _tasted_ red.

She pushed against him, kissing, but forcing his face away so they could look at each other. Her hands rose and rested on his chest. He leaned toward her, and she leaned back, smiling, scrutinizing, curious and so maddeningly seductive, Sebastian almost lost the ability to see straight.

"And how was your day, love?" she asked—casual, dismissive, and teasing.

Sebastian let out a low whine.

She chuckled and lifted herself, running against him like water over a smooth stone, onto the table. Two of her fingers hooked between the buttons of his shirt and she drew him forward. He fell to her, his own fingers fluttering to find a hem of hers, but she stopped them, gripping low on her back. Sebastian whined again.

"Answer my question, hm?" she said, lifting her knee to nudge his chin.

"Good," he said, but his voice was hoarse.

"And ask me how my day was."

He eased his hips between her legs so he could lean into her, run his nose, then his tongue, along the skin of her neck. Grelle made that noise again, and he almost went insane.

"My darling, how was your day?" he whispered.

"Good," she replied, and he could hear the grin in her voice.

"I'm glad."

She released his hands, massaging them into her hips—an action he promptly took over as she put her arms around his neck, let her fingers drift down his back and around to his front where they slipped beneath his collar and unhooked a single button. He brought his hands beneath her legs, and she locked them around his middle, ankles crossed behind his back.

"May I?" he asked.

She smiled, kissed him. "Of course."

So Sebastian lifted her from the table and took her to the floor, where he was reminded why it was Grelle that he had chosen to pour his passion into before anything else.


	11. Rascal

Ilkley had been a spa destination once, and it showed in the yellow stone of the Victorian town hall and train station and local theatre. In the flowers that bloomed in planters alongside the road and hung from the streetlights. In the fact that a town so small had been graced with a Betty's Café Tea Rooms—this in similitude of Harrogate, Grelle assumed. Britain's "happiest place to live."

Grelle had always preferred Ilkley.

Though she was a southerner through and through, Grelle felt a particular connection to Yorkshire. Perhaps it was the short stretch of years she and Sebastian had spent living in Felixkirk around the turn of the century. There was something about the land, some energy, that crept into her heart. They did call it "God's Own Country" for a reason.

She loved moors most.

That afternoon, she found herself trekking up the steep incline of Ilkley Moor, low clouds racing across a sky uncharacteristically blue overhead. Sebastian strode the trail ahead of her, a blanket over one arm and a collection of gear in a messenger bag over the other, as he had always refused to carry a backpack. Grelle cradled their box from Betty's—filled to the top with scones and tarts and sandwiches—against her chest.

The Wharfedale valley rolled along to their right, Ilkley's buildings nestled at its low point, split by the River Wharfe. A patchwork of gentle green, divided here and there by copses of trees. The hills in Yorkshire were the stuff of travel magazines and nature paintings. Everything seemed orchestrated to be as beautiful as possible, though the symphony of lines and shapes was a natural one.

Sebastian came to a stop and Grelle nearly walked into him as both of their gazes were fixed out across the valley.

"I always forget Yorkshire looks like this," he said.

Grelle smiled. "I don't."

He looked at her and smiled—smiled for a long time, eventually leaning down to lift her chin with a gentle set of fingers and touch his lips to hers. She kissed him back, gave him a smile when he moved away.

"Go on," she said, and nodded for him to continue along the trail. "Before the tea cools."

"And if I'm not finished enjoying the view?" he asked with a shrewd grin.

Grelle laughed and swatted him. "Go _on_ , cheeky. Up the hill."

When he did not move, keeping his eyes and his smile fixed on her face, she shook her head and moved past him, scrambling over a small patch of heather to do so.

"Demons have such short stamina," she replied, tossing the comment behind her.

It got him moving. He came up swiftly, sneaking his chin over her shoulder so he could purr in her ear, "You know that _that_ is categorically untrue." She giggled, and he kissed her neck, and together they pressed on.

Sebastian pulled ahead as they reached the top of the incline. Moorland spread out ahead in soft undulations until it dropped off into the valley on the other side. The heather was hardly in bloom—little more than scattered patches of dark brown color. The wind rushed over the top of the heath, momentarily blocking the noise of the roads in the town below. Once they made their way onto the moor proper, the sounds of civilization would disappear entirely, buried under the stifling quiet of the landscape.

Her hair got caught in that wind, obscuring her vision of the greens and browns and blues and yellows with strips of red for a moment until she tied it back in a knot at the base of her skull.

"Which way, my love?" Sebastian asked, indicating a divergence in their path.

"To the left," Grelle replied.

Sebastian obliged.

Grelle had been summoned to Leeds to do some consulting work for the newly formed branch of the Shinigami Dispatch Association in the city, having run the long-since defunct Yorkshire Branch herself a century ago. Today was the first day she'd had away from the office and Sebastian had come up from London to spend it with her.

She had insisted they go to Ilkley. Not quite the North York Moors, but much closer to Leeds. Should anyone need her at Dispatch.

The further they walked, the quieter it became—only the crunch of their feet on the trail and the wind as it rushed around them. Eventually they broke from the main trail and picked their way across the wilderness to find a place to sit amid the tall grass. Sebastian spread their blanket out. Grelle sat and untied the ribbon round their box from Betty's.

The pair prepped their tea in companionable silence, Sebastian passing Grelle her thermos, Grelle handing him his share of their treats. She took her own from the box with reverence, the famous Fat Rascal. A fruit scone with cherry eyes and an almond smile. She was meticulous with her butter and jam, to the point where she had Sebastian chuckling at her.

"Yes?" she said, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

"You're a treasure," he replied.

Pursing her lips, she gave him a playful scowl. "That's what people say of their grandmothers."

"Remind me again how old you are?"

Her mouth fell open and she whacked him across the chest, which only made him laugh more. She hit him again to no avail.

"You, Sebastian Michaelis, are an ass."

He smiled, leaning right into her face, but she was determined not to let him work his tricks on her. She stuck her tongue out, then navigated around him to pop a bite of scone into her mouth. His eyes narrowed into a playful glint, but he sat back, collected his thermos, and took a long sip.

They are in relative silence as well. It was refreshing, spending time with him in the quiet. London was so noisy, their lives so busy, that to sit for but a moment in a swath of grass and hear almost nothing was a marvelous, almost holy, experience.

Moors were relatively desolate places. Home to few animals and insects, only a small handful of plant species. It was part of the reason it was so quiet. No one and nothing to disturb the land, nothing to rustle though the bushes or flit through the sky, calling or croaking to each other.

"Quiet, isn't it," Sebastian said. "Like we're the only living beings on the planet."

Grelle chuckled, tucking her hair behind her ear as the wind once again blew it free. "But neither of us is really 'living', are we?"

He looked at her, red eyes almost brown in complement of the landscape.

"Do you miss your human life, my love?"

Swallowing, Grelle looked down at the remnants of the scone in the box on her lap. She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly before lifting her gaze to him once more.

"No," she said. "Not often."

"But sometimes?"

It was rare that Sebastian came off as innocent, but he did then, tilting his head to the side to study her.

Grelle smiled, subdued. "Life— _living,_ I suppose—was not exactly kind to me, as you well know," she said. There _was_ a reason she had killed herself, after all. Not one reason, but many reasons that simply stacked one on top of the other until she broke under the weight of them. "I think I was too passionate for living. A human body… _that_ body…couldn't contain me."

She turned to look in the direction of the valley, but could hardly see beyond the rolling moor, beyond the grass. Its thousand stalks waved in the wind, yellow, many of them gone to seed.

"In a way, this…was inevitable," she continued. A self-effacing laugh, and she looked back at Sebastian. "Morbid as that may sound."

He hummed a short note of understanding, or perhaps just agreement. With his being a demon, she didn't _expect_ him to understand. He had made his efforts across the years, but beyond being a Shinigami, Grelle was a fairly complex and incomprehensible being. Even to herself.

She fished a finger around the bottom of the box from Betty's to collect any last crumbs from her Fat Rascal. Such a great name, that. Fat Rascal.

"Thank you for coming all this way, Sebastian," she said, focused still on the box.

"I cleared things for a few extra days away," he replied. "If you'll have me."

Her eyes flicked to him and he was already smiling. She couldn't help the rise it brought to her own mouth. Abandoning the box, she moved across the blanket to place a hand on the side of his face.

"Of course I will, darling," she said. "I'd love your company."

Smiling still, he pressed his cheek into her palm, then turned and touched his lips to it in a kiss. Grelle's stomach rolled at the affection, excited still even after more than a century together. She would never tire of him, the same way she would never tire of the Yorkshire countryside. He was as beautiful as any dale or valley, as perfectly desolate as a moor. Gods, she loved him.

Careful, unwilling to disturb the quiet, she crept closer, climbing into his lap even as his arms found their way around her hips. She eased herself against him, their eyes locked, and they both let their breath out. His demonic heat was so warm—warm between her legs, warm against her breast, against her mouth as she kissed him. Even his tongue was warm as it dipped between her lips. Like easing into a hot spring.

She held herself tight against him, let his hands and fingers wander where they pleased, herself sinking deeper and deeper into that spring until she was gone completely and the pair of them were nothing but heat.

She never felt cold with him. Never felt dead, but alive and burning, bleeding passionate. She felt herself, unfettered and free. Loved in that freedom, _for_ that freedom. For her recklessness and insatiably. They were a good match, hard as that was to believe. Sometimes she couldn't believe it herself. Then they got going like this and suddenly it was the only thing in the universe that made sense.

" _Sebastian_ ," she whispered, so soft not even the wind would hear.

He sighed against her ear, breath as hot as the rest of him, as hot as both of them, tangled together.

"I sometimes forget we feel like this," she said.

He smiled, teeth brushing her cheek. "I don't."

Grelle laughed, a blush coloring her cheeks as she shut her eyes and focused on that feeling. No, she did not often miss her human life because she had not been living then.

She was living now.


	12. Leeds

Leeds rained. Rain in England was a torrential thing. The water fell straight down when it was heavy, and misted on the air when it was light. Sometimes the mist combined with the heaviness and soaked even the densest of fabrics—even fabric that was protected by an umbrella.

Sebastian stood at the window of Grelle's temporary flat, sipping a his tea and watching the downpour. The noise of it was loud on the slate roof.

Dispatch had put them up on the waterfront, and the flat—a former dockyard building—had a view of the River Aire, lazy and dark grey with the weather. A pair of black ducks cut trails through the water, necks bobbing as they sought out shelter further downstream where human development had encroached less on the trees and bushes that lined the banks. There were no trees here, in the city center, where the river was flanked by brick and mortar. This had been the haunt of fishermen, merchants, and sailors—the poor and the dirty. Now all the buildings had been converted into flats and hotels, expensive restaurants and office spaces. That's what happened when artists moved into poor areas. They'd make it beautiful, make it trendy, and then the wealthy would swoop in wanting a piece, and price the artists out, and they'd move on to begin the accidental gentrification process of other areas.

"Gods, you look like you're contemplating the nature of the universe again," Grelle remarked, moving by him as she tied a ribbon around her neck and the high collar on her shirt. "Easy does it, love."

Sebastian gave her a smile over his shoulder, and she returned it.

"I like contemplating the nature of the universe," he said.

She came to the window, wrapping her arms around his middle and resting her cheek against his back, along his spine between his shoulders. He lifted his free hand and set it atop one of hers, pressed her closer. He brushed his fingers across the pale skin on the back of her hand, eventually linking them with hers.

"You'll be all right today?" she asked. "In the rain on your own?"

"I don't mind the rain, Grelle," he replied. "Nor a bit of solitude."

She clicked her tongue at him and pulled away—offended, probably, but only as much as she would be by his teasing. He cinched his fingers round hers, though, and pulled her back, hugging her hips to his and smiling down at her. She gave him an indignant expression.

"I _will_ miss you," he said.

Her lips pressed together, and she shook her head, annoyed, but only just. Sebastian set his tea on the windowsill.

"I miss you every moment we're apart."

A skeptical eyebrow rose at that. Laughing, Sebastian wrapped his arms around her, dragged his fingers down her spine that arched a little under his touch. Grelle settled her forearms against his chest, her fists by his chin, and she held him at bay, though they were already tangled and touching every inch from the waist down.

"I don't believe you for one second," she said.

"Not even one?"

She shook her head. He ran his fingers along her jaw, her neck, watching the invisible lines he traced while her eyes stayed focused on his face. He looked at her eventually and found a smile hidden on her mouth. He kissed it free.

"Must you go?" he whispered, pulling back only far enough to speak.

"I'm here as a consultant to the new branch, not to entertain you," Grelle replied. She gave his hair a playful tug at the back. He laughed.

"No," he said, "but _I_ am here to entertain _you_."

That smile snuck around the corners of her mouth again, and Sebastian moved to hunt it down with another kiss, but Grelle rolled her hips against his and sent his mind somewhere hungry for a moment. She chuckled, knowing full well the kind of effect she had on him.

"Gods, you're proud," she said. "Do you know that?"

"Nobody's—"

She rolled again.

"— _hngh—_ perfect."

Grelle laughed outright, and had Sebastian been human or perhaps more sensitive, he might have been embarrassed. As it was, his only thought was of keeping her a little longer, of making some use of their time. They had an eternity of it, and yet he felt as though it was wasting. He wanted her close to him always.

"Your tea's getting cold," Grelle said.

He leaned toward her, linked their lips together, licking into her mouth when her lips parted. Grelle sighed. Her fingers rushed through his hair, and she held on, and they clung to each other like that—safe, for the moment, from the rain outside. Safe in their borrowed flat.

The moment she pulled back, Sebastian's fingers found their way to the ends of the thin, black ribbon round her neck. He went to unlace the bow, but she stopped him.

"I have to go, love," she said.

"Then make me a promise."

"What's that?"

He smiled. "When you come back, we pick up right here."

Grinning, she touched a kiss to his cheek. "Promise."

Sebastian released her then, and she collected her coat and her umbrella, giving him a wink as she slipped out the door. He returned his attention to the window, but his mind was occupied with thoughts of Grelle.

He left the flat eventually, though the rain had not eased in the slightest, took a shortcut through the churchyard of Leeds Minster and headed up the gentle incline deeper into the city. Leeds was relatively compact for a city of its population, and the city center was perfect for pedestrians, not that it mattered to a demon how far he had to walk. In spite of the rain, the streets were as busy as ever, occupied by people in such a variety of shapes and styles and histories that Sebastian found himself marveling at them.

Leeds was a place of brick and stone, of the progeny of immigrants and factory workers. In the wet, all its colors were deeper and more vibrant. Masonry covered with the soot of exhaust, but somehow made more charming in its efforts to be clean.

He walked through the shopping area around Trinity, eyes focused up in spite of the rain. At street level, the city was glass shopfronts and modern remodeling. But starting at the second, the buildings became stonework in orange and red and grey and white and black, each unique, each original—Victorian, Georgian, some made to look as though they were. It reminded him of himself and Grelle in a way. Old things posing as new ones. Convincing on one level. Showing their true colors on another.

He took himself to the Art Gallery and Henry Moore Institute, spent a good long while admiring the collection—the photography in particular—so long, in fact, that the museum closed before he had finished. On his walk back to the flat, he stopped into Nando's to pick up something for dinner. Grelle had already returned by the time he came through the front door with take-out chicken.

"How was your solitude?" she asked.

Sebastian did not respond, instead setting the food down atop the kitchen table, taking Grelle's hand, and leading her over to the window.

"And where are we going?" she chuckled.

"Where we left off," he replied.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and hugged their hips together. She kept her eyes on his face, surveying him with amusement, holding still to let him slide their bodies into the exact position he desired. Once he was happy, he lifted his fingers to the ends of the ribbon round her neck and pulled until it came untied in one even motion. He pressed his fingers into her throat then, smoothed along the underside of her jaw.

"You are the most enchanting creature on which I have ever laid my eyes," he said.

"Thank you, love."

"Mm."

The sound purred in the back of his throat. He leaned down to kiss her and found her soft and pliable beneath his lips and hands. Perfectly cold. When she kissed him back, he purred again, and the sound made her chuckle.

"What?" he asked.

Tilting back a little, she smiled as she spoke, smiled as she slipped the ribbon from her neck and then freed the buttons on her blouse one by one. "I know you're never happy about the comparison, love, but you're an animal." He only proved her point when she had to lift his chin to raise his gaze to her eyes. "You know that?"

"Nobody's perfect," he said again.

She pulled him away from the window, over to the sofa where she sat him on the cushions and herself in his lap.

"I never said you weren't perfect," she replied.


End file.
